


Everything New

by winged



Series: Optimism in Heavy Boots [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Punk, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, Kid Fic, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Polyfidelity, auau, but yes it should be read that way, ish, the poly is mostly implied here guys sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-01
Updated: 2014-06-01
Packaged: 2018-01-27 21:22:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1722935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winged/pseuds/winged
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“She liked you, I think, Jeanette,”  Enjolras says, and glances at him with a small smile. </i>
  <br/>
  <i>“She’s just figuring out how to breathe. I think she likes anyone who keeps her head supported.”  </i>
</p><p>In which there is a Pontmercy baby, and a lot of love, and nobody dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything New

**Author's Note:**

> So this was supposed to be a drabble consisting of Grantaire holding a baby and no (or only former) E/R.  
> Um, well, that only sort of happened?
> 
> This takes place in the same universe as [The Oppressed, Rising](http://archiveofourown.org/works/932560), about three years down the line, and there is reference to the events therein, particularly the beginning of the AIDS crisis and the fact that Enjolras, Courfeyrac and Combeferre are a hardcore/punk band called The Abased. 
> 
> Still not sure about where this went, but it all ends well and that's fine with me.

When Marius had told them, hushed, eyes wide with something between total goddamn terror and complete wonder at the world, reactions had been mixed, to say the least. Both Courfeyrac and Eponine knew first, of course, but they’d still all sat quiet with the news, unable to conjure either scolding or congratulations.

Except for Enjolras: “How could you two be so careless?” he’d asked, eyes sharp. “Jesus, you know better, you could have just asked Joly or gone to the drop-in, or, _Courf_ \--” He’d glanced then at his best friend, eyes suddenly concerned.

“‘Ras,” Combeferre had said from behind him. Gentling.

“We WERE being careful,” Marius had said, beet red behind his freckles. "We’ve all been careful, for years now, it just -- you know, it happened.”

“What are you going to do?” R had asked quietly from where he sat next to Eponine, trying to wrap his mind around bringing new life into a world like this one and not quite succeeding. He wasn't quite managing to wrap his mind around any of them as parents, either.

“We’re keeping it,” Marius said, and he sat down then, staring at the middle of the table. “I mean, I -- that’s what Cosette wants, and it’s up to her. Whatever she wants.” He looked up at them, eyes bright and so very young seeming. “But I want to, too.”

“You’ll be a hell of a better father than most of us have had,” Courf had said with certainty, putting a hand against Marius' neck. “And you’ll have all of us.” His eyes had dared any of his friends to challenge that, and no one had.

 

Back then, it had seemed insane.

Now, it seems crazy in a completely different way, eleven of them clustered, having arrived in twos and threes as phone calls made it down the line. They’d infiltrated the hospital lounge like a fucked-up infantry, gathering disapproving looks from other families. R can’t tell if the looks are aimed at their dyed hair, ripped jeans and buttons with things like IMPEACH REAGAN and SILENCE = DEATH all over their jackets; the fact that they’re all young adults in a maternity ward; their almost aggressive affection for each other. Probably all of the above.

"Family only," the nurse says, has to say over and over again while they argue; Eponine manages to argue her way in with pure bite, and the rest of them sit in that lounge for hours. Courf paces until Combeferre gets up and holds him still, and eventually he curls up in a chair between 'Ferre and Enjolras. The ashtray in the very corner fills up.

 

Jeanette Pontmercy arrives healthily screaming around 11pm on December 1st, 1988, and the nurses begrudgingly allow them in. “A few at a time,” the nurse says, harried. “This isn’t a club.”

 

Cosette is smiling: disheveled and tired but settled and happy with Marius wrapped around her on the bed, and Eponine beaming perched on a stool. R tentatively leans to see the very new little girl in her arms. He has younger siblings, and he remembers caring for them, but for whatever reason he never really remembers them like this, a tiny wrinkled thing, eyes huge and deep blue, skin still a little translucent and utterly, utterly beautiful.

“She’s amazing,” he says, and at that moment he can’t really be too afraid for anything, even her. She’s going to have Cosette and Eponine, Marius and Courfeyrac, and she’ll have the rest of them too. She’ll destroy worlds. She might even save them.

“Do you want to hold her?” R's eyes go wide at the suggestion, and Cosette laughs at him. “You aren’t going to break her.”

“What if I do?” he asks with a nervous laugh, but he steps closer and sits on the edge of the bed, next to Marius, turned toward her.

“Then I get to kill you,” Eponine says, and he’s pretty sure she’s not remotely kidding.

Cosette ignores them both and puts her carefully into his arms. All the air feels like it’s being sucked out of his chest for a second, and he moves his hand to cradle her head. _She's going to fall, he's going to fuck up and hurt her._ She doesn’t fall. Her hands just spread, startled, for a moment. Her whole head fits inside his hand, soft with blonde hair, and when he touches her little hand she wraps it around his finger.

“Hey, there,” he says in quiet awe, and Jeanette blinks unfocused eyes and yawns a little. “She’s not even crying,” he says softly, and realizes he fully expected to be rejected by a baby immediately. But she’s not. She’s sleepy, fed and having just accomplished a hell of a lot, and she’s perfectly happy to be still.

“See? You’re okay. You know just as much as any of us.” Cosette smiles, resting her head on Marius’ shoulder. “You could even babysit,” she suggests, and that thought is at least as selfish as it is a compliment, but R raises an eyebrow at her anyway.

“You think that’s a good idea?” he asks Jeanette softly, holding her instinctively close to his chest. “God, she’s tiny. I could fit her inside my jacket.”

“She looks tiny,” Cosette says with a small grin. “Didn’t _feel_ that way.”

He laughs, and Jeanette makes a startled half-cry at his jump. “Hey, I’m sorry,” R says and rocks her a little, shifting his weight more like dancing than rocking. “You know, I don’t know too many lullabies, Jean-Genie. If I’m gonna babysit you might get stuck with the Pogues.”

“You better get her some earplugs.” R looks up. Enjolras is watching from the doorway, his expression unreadable.

Courf leans over his shoulder in the doorway. “Of course we’re getting her earplugs. She’s gonna be The Abased’s mascot.” Enjolras grins at that, and Courf passes him. “May I?” he asks R as if he’s stepping in for a dance; R gets up, surprising himself at how evenly he moves, and, like holding glass or something explosive -- or maybe just incredibly precious -- passes Jeanette to him, switching places. Courf sits with her, next to Marius, and Eponine comes to sit curled on the front of the bed, rest her head on Cosette's legs and watch them.

 

R watches for a moment and excuses himself without having to say anything. The four of them - the five of them - leave his chest too full to bear, a little, and he heads for the exit, not terribly surprised when Enjolras follows a few steps behind. He taps down the box of cigarettes against his hand, waits for the singer to catch up.

“They’re fucking perfect,” he says. “ _She’s_ perfect.”

“She liked you, I think, Jeanette,”  Enjolras says, and glances at him with a small smile.

“She’s just figuring out how to breathe,” R says, shaking out a cigarette. He always instinctively wants to offer one to Enjolras, even after all this time. “I think she likes anyone who keeps her head supported.”  

“Christ, Grantaire,” Enjolras says, “take the fucking compliment.”

Grantaire allows himself a private smile, cupping a hand around the flame of his lighter. “You want kids?”

“ _No_ ,” Enjolras says immediately, then, “maybe someday, but they’d hate me,” and then, “anyway, it’s unlikely to be a real option.”

“Not an accidental one, that’s for sure. Why would they hate you?”

“For the same reasons you hate me.”

R laughs and raises an eyebrow, exhaling a long plume of smoke. “Are you operating under the delusion that not fucking you anymore means I hate you suddenly?”

Enjolras gives him a look. “I think you’ve always kind of hated me, and I think you were right to: I’m pretentious, I’m so wrapped up in change I don't see what's going on right now, I don’t back down when I’m right --”

“You don’t know when you’re wrong,” R points out.

“I always know when I’m wrong,” Enjolras grins, “I’m just not very often.”

“Bullshit. Anyway, you’re wrong right now. I never hated you. Ever. I hated a lot of things, but not you.” He pauses and looks over. “Did you hate me?”

“No,” Enjolras says quietly. “I thought I hated you, sometimes. Not -- those last few months. Before; before everything. I thought I hated you for a long time. I certainly wanted to. But I didn’t.”

“And at the end?”

“No, not then either.”

“Well, I thought I was in love with you,” Grantaire says wryly, and looks over at him. “I don’t know which one’s worse to find out you’re wrong about.”

Enjolras tips his head up, tucks his hands in the pockets of his overdyed red jacket and looks at R and back away. “When did you find out you were wrong?”

R’s known Enjolras too long to fall for the facade of cool; he turns sideways instead, moving into his space and keeping his eyes on him. “When I fell in love with you,” he says, simply, lets him have that one, instead of making a joke.

Enjolras sinks back against the brick a little and looks at him. “When was that?”

“I don’t know,” R says, and excuses looking away by turning from Enjolras’ face to exhale. “It isn’t like I thought, like some crush, love at first sight, thunderbolt out of the blue. Like not breathing. More like -- you know when a song starts playing and the counterpoint kicks in and you can kind of live inside it?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Enjolras says, and he can’t tell if the certainty behind his words is because he knows music or he knows love, and he doesn’t want to ask that question.

“But if it helps,” R says with a wry smile, “I think I was sitting on your couch when I figured it out.”

"And now?"

R knows Enjolras is echoing him, but he can't tell if it's intentional or not, the way rhetoric just sort of clings to him. "Now, too," he says.

Enjolras takes it in silence. "God," he finally says, "I wish that was all that mattered."

"Isn't it?" R has had this argument too many times, he's been on the other side of it, he knows the steps leading or following, backwards, blind. He has to fight instinct not to finish it. "You know how many funerals I've been to this year?" he asks instead.

Enjolras shakes his head. "No." He makes a face. "Only the ones I went to."

"I feel like I've been holding my breath for two years,” he says. “Today feels -- I don't know!” He spreads his hands wide, eyes bright. “Brand fucking new. Like there's nothing else. That kid, there's nothing she's dreading waking up for yet. She's not making plans. I just - _fuck_ , who cares if we're disasters, tonight. What if this is all there is?"

"I can't live like that, you know I can't," Enjolras says, softly. "You want to make this about Jeanette? I look at her and I see every future we could have, everything that could change if we do things right and everything we could leave her with. I can't believe there's no tomorrow, Grantaire, I can't just _not think_ like you do, just forget about effect, consequences --”

"Yeah, I love that about you too. It's horrible. You can stop anytime."

"You scare me so much sometimes," Enjolras says. "And I'm not what you need. We _don't work_ , and I hate that, and -- fuck, I want to kiss you right now."

“I do too.”

“Hate that we’re terrible or want to--”

“Yes,” he says, and kisses him, right in the back parking lot where anyone could see, throws away his cigarette to grab his jacket with both hands, “ _yes_.” Enjolras kisses him back, swears and pulls away so abruptly that R freezes, stomach twisting.

Enjolras stares at him for a second, eyes on the verge of panic, and then they go fierce and he kisses him again, pushes both hands into his hair and presses up into it; it’s a little terrifying and a little like remembering to breathe. Grantaire’s hands are fisted into the back of his jacket.

 

“What are we doing,” Enjolras says, catching his breath. “We -- what are we even doing.”

“It’s snowing,” R says, tipping his head up and letting the flakes melt on flushed cheeks. “‘Ras, it’s snowing.”

“Okay, it’s snowing,” Enjolras says, and takes a step away to look up into the sky where white flakes, so small they look like glitter, are shining against the lights. “Grantaire. What are we doing?”

“We’re kissing. We’re being in love. We're staging a protest in the fucking hospital parking lot.” He raises an eyebrow, entirely shameless and not feeling like he has to apologize for anything. Tonight things are beautiful, tonight the risk is worth it. And tonight, maybe for the next eighteen years, he wants to be someone who doesn’t back down.  

He smiles at that. “And what are we protesting?”

“Family visitation only,” he says and flicks off the hospital door with intent. “Fucking funerals. Empty venues. People staring. Overthinking everything and hating ourselves.” He runs a hand through his hair and looks down. When he glances back up it's without expectation. “Love not being enough to fight for it.”

Enjolras steps closer, and his slow, rueful grin is so familiar it makes R's breath catch. "A worthy cause, but it sounds like it needs some organization." 

"What happened to spontaneous action?" 

"There's something to be said for it," Enjolras says, and kisses him, and the snow comes down. 


End file.
